I had to stop and stare at the human fighters. They looked like armored wedges more than anything else; wide and thin, like the smile of an axe turned on its side with a whole lot of attitude. Ours were thin needles with massive anti-grav fins, the better to piece the atmosphere of our homeworld. I wondered how the human aircraft would fare, they looked like they would have problems getting in the air without anti-grav. And I couldn’t see any hardpoints for weapons either, leaving me to wonder just how these aircraft fought. I stepped closer, seeing a group of human pilots clustered around, talking excitedly.

“You see the atmo stats Skywalker? This place actually has a stratosphere!”

“Yeah, I did Dogger. And it caps at eighty thousand feet. Can’t Kadena the sam sites, we’re gonna have to weasle them.”

“So? Just means we get to have some fun for once man! We might even get clearance all the way up to 20%. Maybe even missiles too!”

“Alright Dogger, zip it. TG’ll be back in a bit, and we need to cross-check the grav and atmo density again. Phoenix, what’s the grav number look like? In UEVN numbers, please.”

“Zero dot seven three three Gee. Heavy enough to keep us in atmo, light enough we’re gonna have to watch the throttles. TG will have the egghead’s woorkup on max safe throttle and weapons. You know they don’t tell us squat.”

A large, warm hand clasped me on the shoulder, “Come to see the Birds eh? Just remember to use your ear protection when we takeoff here in a bit. And don’t be behind the planes when do either. Engine wash is a rough mistress.”

I blinked, processing his words, and read the patch on his uniform. LCDR K. Loggins, UEVN.

“Call me TG. I’ll give you the tour later, but you’re gonna want to watch the tapes too. Now, we’ve a bit of a scramble situation here. Your air raid sirens will be lighting off in a minute, but our carrier picked them up first. Eyes in orbit are hard to hide from.”

With that, he slapped my shoulder again and headed over to his pilots.

“Alright, listen up. Three minute scramble alert, so no time for a full briefing on the ground. Max throttle is one seven point zero percent, WEP at one nine dot zero percent. Max safe altitude is seven five thousand feet, after that you go trans-atmo. Missiles are a no-go, eggheads haven’t got the atmo comp down one hundred percent yet. That means we are guns only. Phoenix?”

“Count on the hostiles?”

“The Tyler puts it at sixty-four, unknown mix of bomb-trucks and fighters, in the first wave, with three more waves behind that. No other questions? Right. Saddle up and let’s get airborne.”

The air raid siren started to scream, shaking the bones in my body. The four humans just ran for their aircraft and jumped impossibly high by our standards, landing in the open cockpits. Moments later small circles opened on the ‘thick’ back edges of the aircraft and a massive howl drowned out even the air raid sirens. I clutched my ears and watched in awe as the human aircraft rolled forwards and leapt into the sky impossibly quickly. Even my top-of-the line fighter would take three times as long to lift.

The ‘engine wash’ I had been warned about threw a luckless fuel bowser (thankfully empty) across the runway and into a ditch. I had to swallow and remind myself to actually run for my own aircraft. The humans were going to need help against those sorts of odds.

I still couldn’t believe the combat footage, even after my own commanders had vouched for it. It matched all of our own tracking data, it matched the wreckage scattered on the ground, it even matched my own memories of the fight.

Four human aircraft had slaughtered four full attack waves, each over sixty aircraft strong, without even a scratch. ‘TG’ alone had one hundred and forty confirmed kills. And they had done it without firing a single missile, lazer, plasma cannon, or any other seeking or hit-scan weapon. It had all been done with ludicrously overpowered ‘20mm rotary cannon’, six each in the leading edge of each aircraft, firing lumps of steel and explosives.

The four human pilots were all kicked back, chatting away like nothing had happened. Like they hadn’t just wiped the skies clear of a ridiculous number of foes with limited to no more than ‘last-ditch’ weapons, flying at only one fifth of their maximum speed, and then gone on to drain the foe’s air defence batteries by deliberately offering themselves as targets and then forcing every incoming shot to miss.

I shook my head in wonder. What sort of terrors would these human fighters be if they were allowed to really cut loose?